"Chicago #1" (C-print, 2000)
A continuing body of work...
"Chicago #1" (C-print, 2000)
The series began in 2000. Aquaria represent another world for me, a world of
fear and fantasy. Aquaria are like dreams and large photographs, contained within
borders, but moving in time.
The fish and mammals float in another world, quite unlike our own. The fish
take in oxygen to survive, like us, yet with gills and not lungs. My lungs make
it impossible for me to breathe in this underwater landscape. I cannot hold
my breath like dolphins and penguins. I fear that if I ever fall into these
waters, I will be pulled under by sea creatures, unable to rise to the surface
and lost forever in their world.
Sometimes when I dream it is blurry, like underwater vision. Is this how they
(the underwater creatures) see? Sometimes when I run in a dream, I can hardly
move, it is hard to lift my legs and arms sort of like running in water, so
very different from how a fish or dolphin or penguin swims. They move so smoothly
and fast like a bird soaring through the air.
Aquaria are worlds contained by glass walls much like a photograph is contained
by borders and frames. But the glass walls work as mirrors too. Visitors to
the aquarium can lose themselves in either direction, viewing either the world
in front of them or surrounding them.
Who are the visitors to aquaria? Tourists? What does one gain from visiting
an aquarium? Education? Or is it more of a visceral experience? Is it one that
connects more to our senses? Touch, we touch the glass, the cool thick glass.
Vision, we view the smooth rhythmic motions of the swimming creatures. Smell,
smell, what do we smell? Taste? Hear, we listen to the dolphins squeak, the
children laugh; yet the water through the glass is silent, buffered. What would
it sound like if we submerged our heads into the water with the creatures? It
reminds me of swimming when I was a child with my sisters. We would sit at the
bottom of pools and have tea parties, speaking the bubble, garbled underwater
talk that only ends with laughter and the breaking through the water seal to
the air, to inhale the sweet warm air and then to quickly confirm that we understood
each other down there, down in the other world.
-H. D. 2004